An old and misogynistic comment from Donald Trump’s Vice President candidate J.D Vance has resurfaced, in which he attempts to undermine Kamala Harris’ credentials as Vice President by calling her a ‘childless cat lady’.
Naturally, it has ruffled a lot of feathers. Including those of Hollywood actress Jennifer Aniston, who has hit back with a response. Sharing the clip of Vance’s interview with then-Fox News host Tucker Carlson on her Instagram story, the Friends star wrote, ‘I truly can’t believe this is coming from a potential VP of The United States.
‘All I can say is… Mr Vance, I pray that your daughter is fortunate enough to bear children of her own one day.’ Adding, ‘I hope she will not need to turn to IVF as a second option, because you are trying to take that away from her, too.’
Vance has previously voted against the Right to IVF Act, which looked to protect accessibility and affordability of IVF. He has been married to Usha Chilukuri since 2014 and has three children.
To add insult to injury, what Vance said in full in 2021 was that the country was being run ‘by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable about their own lives and the choices that they’ve made, and so they wanna make the rest of the country miserable too.’ He then added, ‘You look at Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, AOC [Alexandra Ocasio Cortez], the entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children.’
Harris is in fact the step-parent to her husband Douglas Emhoff’s two children, Cole and Ella, and is affectionately known as ‘Momala’. However, her status as a parent has no bearing whatsoever on her ability to fulfil her duties as Vice President, or indeed as the current frontrunner for the Democratic candidacy ahead of the next US election.
Jennifer Aniston, who does not have any children and has been repeatedly asked about it throughout her 30+ year career, was right to call out these comments for their irrelevance as well as their potential to stoke harmful prejudices about people without children. The actress then shared a New Yorker cartoon which reads, ‘So I can’t tell a lie but the Supreme Court gets to do whatever the f*ck it wants' to seemingly express her frustration with the double standards existing in mainstream politics.
Aniston is not the only person who had something to say about Vance's 'cat lady' digs. Journalist Elizabeth Day is one of many others who also vocalised her solidarity with Harris in response to the resurfaced comments. She does not have any biological children of her own and has spoken openly about her long-term struggle with fertility in the past; she is also now a stepparent to her husband Justin Basini’s children. Sharing a photo of her kissing her cat on Instagram, Day wrote, ‘Childless cat lady stepmother over here! Hi @kamalaharris you’ve got this.’
Nikki Peach is a writer at Grazia UK, covering TV, celebrity interviews, news and features.